New ICE program enhances removing criminal aliens in Fairfax County

By Staff
Source: Fairfax County Times
MONDAY, MARCH 9 2009

The Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office and other law enforcement agencies have been added to a growing list of jurisdictions throughout the country that are receiving access to a program called Secure Communities, administered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Fairfax County is the first location in the Washington Metropolitan Area and the first in Virginia to participate. Secure Communities will streamline the process for ICE to determine if an individual in local custody is a potentially removable criminal alien.

Beginning today, the immigration records in DHS’s biometric database, if any, of every individual booked in the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center and other sites in the county will be checked.

Formerly as part of that booking process, arrestees’ fingerprints were taken and checked for criminal history information against the DOJ biometric system maintained by the FBI.

With the implementation of Secure Communities, the fingerprints of arrested individuals will now be automatically checked against both the FBI’s criminal history records and the biometrics-based immigration records maintained by DHS.

If an individual’s fingerprints match those of a person in DHS’s biometric system, the new automated process will notify ICE and the participating agency submitting the fingerprints. ICE will evaluate each case to determine the individual’s immigration status and take appropriate enforcement action.

Top priority will be given to offenders who pose a threat to the public safety, such as aliens with prior convictions for major drug offenses, murder, rape, robbery, and kidnapping.

“Secure Communities is a new effort to identify and ultimately remove dangerous criminal aliens from our communities,â€